


rip the earth in two with your mind

by Mx_Carter



Series: gonna dig six feet up tonight [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Age Reversal, Bisexual Female Character, Crystal Brown is a Good Mum, Disabled Character, F/F, F/M, Families of Choice, M/M, Multi, Origin Stories, Steph is Oracle, Stephanie Brown deserves all the love, co-dependant superheroes in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-03-10 22:43:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3306086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mx_Carter/pseuds/Mx_Carter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Joker destroyed Stephanie Brown's life. So she makes a new one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	rip the earth in two with your mind

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [My Brain](https://archiveofourown.org/works/629560) by [heartslogos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartslogos/pseuds/heartslogos). 
  * Inspired by [My Brain](https://archiveofourown.org/works/629560) by [heartslogos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartslogos/pseuds/heartslogos). 



> This was inspired by the incomparable heartslogos and her Age Reversal AU, which is super good and everyone should read it. Basically, the ages of all the robins and batgirls have been swapped, so Dami was the first Robin and Steph the first Batgirl. I know I haven't stuck to continuity very well, but hey. If I've fucked up anywhere, please tell me.
> 
> Title from I Gave You All by Mumford & Sons

Tim sits silently beside her hospital bed. His eyes are closed, but he isn't asleep; she can always tell. He still hasn't let go of her hand.

Her voice is scratchy when she speaks. "I know Bossman isn't too keen on the whole murder thing, but d'you think he'd let me make an exception? Like, just the once?"

Tim sighs. "Steph...you know he won't."

Abruptly she is angry, so fucking angry because how dare he, how dare the asshole who has looked down on her at every turn tell her she can't take what she's owed.

The Joker took her fucking _legs_. She's _never gonna walk again_. Dammit, she deserves _blood_.

She wants to sit up, to run, to throw things and scream. She wants to rip that monster's throat out through his fucking stomach.

Stephanie Brown lies in the hospital bed, and lets her best friend hold her hand, and tries not to cry.

~~~

The wheelchair isn't quite as scary as she thought it'd be. Steph had been expecting to feel trapped, caged in by the metal and cheap synthetic fabric. And yeah, it was pretty awful at first. But the wheelchair isn't a cage anymore, or a trap. If anything, it makes things a bit better; she can leave her bed and go down the corridor, go outside, get something she wants when it's not in reach, even if it takes effort and some maneuvering.

Really, she just wishes it came in eggplant.

Damian listens, nods, and asks what specific shade she's referring to. He's been weirdly careful around her since the Joker, and much as she liked that at first, it's started to piss her off. She might not be able to kick his ass so easily anymore, but she can sure as hell take a little ribbing.

Fucker better not start using her Christian name, or she'll break out the stink-bombs.

She brings it up on her handy-dandy laptop, and he hums and writes down the serial number, before leaving the room. Hopefully to see about getting her an eggplant wheelchair. God, she loves befriending rich kids.

The laptop hasn't left her side since she came around. Steph's always liked fiddling with shit on the web, ever since one of the sub teachers did an after school crash course in programming, which devolved into a crash course in hacking. She's not sure who approved teaching Crime Alley kids how to so stuff like that to computers, but hey, she's not complaining. After she got the basics down, it was easy enough to figure out the rest. The teacher had called her a prodigy.

Whatever. She's good at this; better than she ever was at fieldwork, if she's honest with herself. Sure, she was goddamn brilliant at fieldwork, and her right hook is the stuff of nightmares, but this is where she shines. Here, with the glow of laptop light turning her pillow-mussed hair into a halo.

There's a kernel of an idea niggling in her brain. She shuts it down for now, and concentrates on what she's doing.

Far as she's concerned, it's not illegal if it's the Westboro Baptist Church.

~~~

Mom comes to get her from the hospital when the doctors finally let her go, after slightly less than two incredibly boring months. Crystal Brown has short, choppily cut hair and her clothes are a bit rumpled, but her eyes are focused and clear. That might just be the best thing she's seen since the shooting.

"I'm clean for good," she tells Steph in their beaten up old car, as they wend their way home. "I..." She falters, stops, then takes a breath and carries on. "I know I've been a godawful mother to you, but that's going to change. I can't take back those years, but..." She sighs, and cards a free hand through her hair. "Maybe I can make up for them. If you'll let me."

Steph's mom is the sort of woman no-one honours, no-one notices. Which is a shame, cause she's absolutely brilliant sometimes.

Steph reaches over, closes her hand round her mom's where it sits on the gearstick. "Sure thing, Mom."

Crystal looks over at her, and then they're laughing and crying together, and Mom's clean, _fucking finally_ , and Steph can't walk, and she's never been so sad, or so wonderfully, bitterly happy.

Maybe things will be okay after all.

~~~

Mom tries to move things out the way, but the fact is that their apartment isn't wheelchair accessible, and probably never will be. Steph can't get into the kitchen anymore, which means she can't make waffles, or help her mom cook, or get food out the fridge when she's hungry. It's another loss, and it makes her want to body-slam the Joker off of something tall.

She improvises; keeps food in her room, snarks at Mom while she's making dinner, begs her for waffles or just buys them in diners. She manages. Still, it's the principle of the thing. She should be able to get into the kitchen in her own fucking house.

Mom asks her tentatively one night if she's coping. "You're so angry all the time, Steph. I've never seen you this mad."

 _Yeah, cause you've been high as a kite half my life._ The bitter words are right on the edge of her tongue, but she swallows them back. Mom's trying, she really is, it's not her fault she was dumb enough to open the door without checking. Not her fault Joker found out their address so easily. Not her fault Steph screwed up.

She _is_ angrier, now. She can taste it, a cold acid burn in her gut, sharpness waiting to spill from her lips, cut everyone else as well. She's angry because Joker came into her house, violated her home with his bullets and his chemical stink. She's angry because it wasn't even about her, because she was nothing more than a pawn in a twisted chess game between a man she hates and a man she admires and dislikes in equal measure. She's angry because Tim and Damian haven't visited her since the hospital. She's angry because they can leave her behind now, like she's always known they wanted to. She's angry because no-one's telling her anything, because they shut her out as soon as they could manage, because she can't get into her kitchen and make fucking waffles without getting stuck in the fucking doorway.

Snarling at her mom, her mom who's been there since the Shooting, who's only been trying to help, won't change any of that. Steph is an optimist, and she point-blank refuses to let Joker make her into something else.

So she pushes it down, slides the sharpness into her belly where it's only cutting her, and breathes. "Yeah, I guess. I just feel so..." She tries to come up with a word that'll sum up everything she hates about this mess. "Useless."

Crystal smiles at her, and there's iron in her eyes. This is the woman who lived before Daddy, this is the woman Arthur had to tread on for years and years to break, even a little. This is the woman who picked herself up afterwards and carried on, lived on better than ever before.

This, Steph thinks, is a woman she wouldn't mind growing into.

"Well, we'll have to do something about that then, won't we?" says Crystal Brown, and her daughter smiles back.

~~~

Bossman may be an arrogant SOB sometimes, but his security is damn good. It takes her two days to crack fully, and by the time she's in, she's too exhausted to do much more than cheer quietly and slide herself into bed for some well-deserved shuteye.

When she wakes up, it's four in the morning. The Bat and the birds will be in the Cave by now, writing up their reports and sucking face behind Daddy Bat's back. Daddy Bat'll be at the computer. She can almost see his outline, hulking black against the light of the Batcomputer.

She's watched the news. She know that they're most likely working on shutting down those new cyberterrorists, the Oracle or whatever they're calling themselves. She can also deduce from the lack of gift-wrapped hackers left somewhere for the police that they're getting nowhere fast.

Lucky for them, she is. It'll be nice, to be the one with the answers for a change.

She double checks that she's connected to the sound system, and the Batcave's unnecessarily humongous fleet of cameras. Once she's sure everything's good, she slips on the headset she got from the sketchy gamer dude down the hall when she fixed his bugged-up computer, and grins evilly, before speaking.

"Surprise, bitches, I bet you thought you'd seen the last of me."

What can she say? Maddison Montgomery is a sweet, sweet gift to this world.

Three dark heads whip up from their screens. Demon Wing draws a knife; no surprises there. Tim looks like someone just slapped him across the face with a brick. It's adorable, it really is. She'd want to squish his cheeks if she wasn't so damn pissed at him.

As for the Bossman...she's pretty sure he's shocked too. It's hard to tell.

He speaks first. "Batgirl?" His voice is soft, almost like he's afraid of jinxing it.

Damian and Tim are on their feet in seconds, shouts of "Steph, are you okay?" and "Brown, what the hell?" blending together, until Bossman gestures for quiet. He's typing at the Batcomputer, probably running a diagnostic, and he looks straight up into the camera when he realises what she's done.

She tells herself she's imagining the pride in his eyes.

"Batgirl?" he asks again. "Why are you contacting us? Is there a problem?"

She leans back in her wheelchair, anger bubbling in her gut. "Nope, no problems here. Everything's rosy, Bossman. Just dandy."

He hears it, she knows he does. The Bossman could always read her like a line of code; it never gets any less irritating. "Why are you contacting us?"

She sighs. "Oh, I'm just feeling a bit left out, y'know? It's so boring, stuck at home, nothing to do. So I got busy."

Bossman looks a little scared. Obviously he's done his research, he knows about the hacking. She can just see the little gears turning in his bat-brain, trying to calculate how much damage she could have possibly caused. She'd forgotten how much fun it is to piss him off. "Exactly what did you do?"

Steph grins, sharp and bright. "Weeeell, you know that cute lil cyber terrorist group you're currently clueless about? I did a bit of digging, aaaand..." She completes the document transfer, grinning wider at the look in his eyes when it begins to spill across his screen. "Think this'll help?"

Bossman's brain must be going in a thousand different directions, but he still finds time to look up at her camera with those damn eyes that still look like they're reading her soul, even with all these wires and screens between them. "This...this helps a lot. Thank you, Batgirl."

She doesn't know if it's the codename, or the way he sounds like he's congratulating a kid on a spelling bee, or the fact that he's been giving her shit for years until now, until she's finally measured up to a few of his impossible standards, or whether she's just been repressing way too damn long. But suddenly she goes from quietly angry to furious.

"I'm not doing this for you, Batman. I'm not trying to be useful, or get back in your good books, or be a good Bat-kid. This isn't about some poor little girl in a wheelchair rolling after her friends to get them to play with her again." She doesn't know quite where this is coming from, but the words are just spilling out, and Damian and Tim look like she's slapped them, and she's horribly, viciously glad.

The silence drags on, until Damian breaks it. "What is this, then?" He sounds honestly curious, like she's an anomaly that he'd never noticed before, and he's pondering how he ever missed it. Of course, it also sounds a little like he's just seen his dog do a new trick and wants to know who taught it to her, but that's Damian for you. Fucking hell, she can't tell if she wants to punch him out or hug him to death.

"This is about me not being broken."

She disconnects from their system, and spends a few minutes breathing quietly in the dark.

~~~

Tim comes to visit her a few days afterwards. Mom's gone to work, and she's alternating between applying for various jobs that'll allow her to work from home - it's more convenient, and it'll free up time for her to put some of her ideas into motion - and reading the online articles on how Oracle was taken out last night. The fact that he actually bothers with a door is surprising. Maybe she's actually managed to teach him some manners.

More likely he's scared that she's still pissed at him.

She lets him stew for a minute or two, and when she looks up again he's perched awkwardly on the couch, his face composed in a way that screams _I don't know how I fucked up, but I'm so sorry._ For that, she takes pity on him.

"Look, boyfriend, I'm still kinda pissed at you. I mean, what was with the radio silence? Dick move, man. But that thing the other night..." She pauses there cause, honestly, she's not sure what that thing the other night was. Looking back, she can't help but flush a bit. Dammit, she's in her twenties. She should be better than this.

Tim sighs. "I _am_ sorry, about not calling. You're right, that was an asshole thing to do. It's just, Damian and I were talking, and..." He glances at her, and sighs before continuing. "I know it was stupid, but you were pretty closed off at the hospital, like you didn't want to see us. So we thought maybe you wanted some time off. Maybe you didn't want to do the hero thing anymore."

She snorts, a little insulted. poor dears, they aren't always so good at people. "Yeah, no. I'm not gonna go civilian just cause Joker didn't approve of my wonderful sense of humour. But seriously, the other night..."

Tim takes her hand. "Hey, it's okay. I get it." She raises an eyebrow at him, and he ducks his head. "Okay, maybe I don't understand fully, but I know what it's like to just have all that anger..." - he makes swirling gestures with his hands, trying to get his point across - "build up, and then the littlest thing is suddenly too much, right? I've been there." He ducks his head again under her questioning look. "I had a messed up childhood. Lets not go there."

"Oh boyfriend," she murmurs, "didn't we all?"

After that they kind of get into a game of Find A Superhero With A Normal Childhood, which is pretty morbid, she'll admit. Still, they're talking easily, and his head's back on her shoulder, and its like nothing's changed.

Later that night, once Tim's had dinner with her and Mom and has finally left, she goes back to her room to find a purple-wrapped package on her bed. It's addressed to Fatgirl.

Damian has gotten her a new laptop and headset. It's not particularly flashy, but she can tell it's quality. She can also tell it's as close to an apology as she's going to get from him.

Anyone else, yeah, she'd be on her way to their house with a bag of bricks right now. But this...Damian is different.

They haven't had a Hallmark moment or anything, but she's known him since he was fourteen and still hadn't quite figured out the whole human thing yet. Even after years and all the good Alfie, his dad, Tim and her have done for him, an actual Talk About Feelings is so far beyond him it's absurd, so he does things like this instead. It's not charity, not really. He just doesn't know how else to say he cares.

Anyway, the laptop's a babe. She's really not above bribery.

~~~

Joker escapes from Arkham a week later, while they're having dinner.

When she hears the news, she feels like she's falling again, that horrible moment of uncontrolled motion before she smacked into the ground. Her spine aches, and she can't quite get a breath in. She's sick with dread.

Mom's just managed to her calmed back down again when Nightwing slides in through the window. He only just dodges the knife she throws at his head, and the part of her that's not busy _freaking the fuck out_ is pleased at how good her aim's gotten. After they've all calmed down a bit more, Dami turns to her.

"Father wants someone guarding you tonight. We don't think Joker's going to try anything, but we don't want to take chances."

Steph nods, steadies her breathing. "Cool. Can you get me my laptops?"

Mom clucks about the bags under Dami's eyes and makes him eat some cookies, while Steph gets to work. Her skin's buzzing, everything feels too bright, too clear, and she knows if she doesn't do something, she'll be useless all night. So she hacks into the city-wide CCTV, and begins her search.

The screens are too small for this kind of work, but she knows enough about Joker's MO to narrow down where he might be staying the night. If she cross-references the footage with the information from the police band - Joker's going to be hiring, and the guys he likes for henchmen aren't very good at inconspicuous - she can narrow it down a lot more.

Dami watches her work over her shoulder. After about half an hour - she's at least sixty per cent sure he's gone to ground near the docks - he says "If you're going to make a habit of this, we'll have to get you bigger screens."

Someone's moving in the corner of the screen. With a jolt, she realises his face is familiar. Her mind paints a picture of a dude with a scar thick on his cheekbones, who'd shot at her the last time she and Tim crashed one of Joker's hideouts. Heart rate picking up. she watches him slip into a warehouse that's definitely seen better days. On her other laptop, she's already pulling up the location, the address, who owns the warehouse. When her search tells her it's currently closed for repairs to the roof, she grins. Gotcha.

Turning to Dami, she grins wildly, brightly. "You read my mind, Demon Wing."

~~~

Batman, Nightwing and Robin take down Joker a week later. He'd moved out of the warehouse after the first night, but they - she, it'd mostly been her work, and she's not gonna let anyone forget it - had managed to contain him before he did any real damage. The feeling is intoxicating.

She'd been on comms that night, chair parked in front of the incredible lady that is the Batcomputer, steering them in the right direction. She'd been their eyes, their ears, mapping their progress as they moved through the mess of traps Joker'd managed to engineer. Apart from a minor incident in which Tim had gotten set on fire a bit, they'd gotten through okay. Watching Bossman beat Joker to a pulp had been very cathartic indeed. She might have squeed a little.

Afterwards, Batman comes to her. He dodges the batarang she throws at him when he crawls in through her window, _what is it with this family and windows, jeez_ , and then sort of stands in the middle of her room like a big black-clad potato.

She doesn't think she's ever seen him awkward. Pissed, yeah, brooding, definitely, but never awkward. She hadn't thought he did awkward.

It's both satisfying and annoying.

To try and distract herself from mulling over just how many daddy issues she has, _holy fuck that's a lot_ , she points to the chair by her desk. He sits in it, and it creaks a bit. She can't help but laugh at that, and she thinks maybe he relaxes slightly.

Eventually he clears his throat. "The work you've been doing for us has been extremely helpful. I was wondering if you wanted to do this full time." His sentences are stripped of emotion, clean and to the point. She can't get a read on him, and it's as frustrating as always.

She smiles at him. "That was the plan."

"You have a plan?" She'd expected surprise, but he just takes it in stride. Asshole had probably predicted this from the start.

So she hefts herself up and starts talking. She only really has the bare bones of a plan, more of an idea, really. But he listens to all of it, really listens, and when she's done, he gives her a look. It's like he's seeing her for the first time, like she's stopped being the annoying hanger-on he's trying desperately to send home. Like he's seeing her as his equal.

It's as painful as it is wonderful. But, she figures, that's the best way for this. Her new persona isn't going to be one of Batman's sidekicks - not that she ever was, not really. She's going to be on the same level as him, and he's going to have to trust her judgement.

"I have an idea for a base," he tells her.

Steph lets herself smile at him, properly. She doesn't forgive him, not yet, but she knows an olive branch when she sees it. 'Till he goes into I Am The Night And The Night Is Never Wrong mode again, she'll let bygones be bygones.

"Just so long as I can get into the kitchen."

~~~

Tim dies, and everything falls apart again.

Tim dies in a warehouse in Europe, so far away from them. Tim dies on the end of Joker's crowbar, and when Batman manages to choke out the words over the comms all the air in her lungs just kind of disappears. It takes hours before she figures out how to fill them properly again.

Tim dies, and Damian disappears for a week. When he comes back, he comes to her. Red eyed, he sits on the edge of her bed, and she doesn't know what to do with him. Platitudes are worthless; she's heard enough of them to know shit like 'it gets better' is probably going to make it worse. So she just lifts a corner of her blankets, and lets him slide in. Her crazy Demon Wing curls into her, resting his head on her shoulder. She runs fingers through his hair and tries to breathe past the hole her best friend has left in her chest.

He speaks an hour later, voice scratchy like her mom's records, the crappy second hand ones that never play on key. "After he shot you, how...how did you let him live?"

She pulls him closer cause isn't that the million dollar question? God, she'd spent months boxing the new, raging part of herself up, tucking it away. There's still days... "I'm not a killer, Dami. If I'd gone through with it, and God knows I wanted to, then I'd have done something that, to me, is wrong. And he'd have made me do it. If he could change me like that, make me do something like that, he would've won. You know me, Dami, I couldn't let him win."

"And if I'm a murderer already? If killing him would not mean that he had changed me in any way?" She's not sure if he wants her to persuade him out of this or not. Maybe he doesn't know himself.

"Put it this way, I'm not gonna stop you. If you really need him to die, then fine. Do what you gotta do. I'll help you hide the body. But think about it, yeah? Really think. Would he thank you for it?"

That's the crux of the matter, they both know that. Cause no, Tim really wouldn't. Tim, who'd always held on to the Bossman's code like a lifejacket, stopping him from sinking like they all knew he could, wouldn't ask them for this. Tim would tell them to let Joker live if it stopped Damian from widening the rift between him and his dad. He wouldn't want them to kill Joker if it fucked up Damian's head all over again, if it hurt Steph.

Damian sighs, his warm breath washing over her shoulder. "He would not ask us to kill in his name. Beloved was always foolish like that."

They lie together the whole night, sharing heat and sadness. Two flightless birds, mourning their nest-mate.

~~~

They'd never really examined what they were. Tim and Steph had dated for a while, and yeah, they'd done the dirty in that time. She and Dami...it had only been a few times back in Damian's last months as Robin, and neither had expected a relationship out of it, but it had been tons of fun. Dude really hadn't been kidding about perfect genetics. Dami and Tim had still been pretty new, but they'd been dancing round each other for so long that it really didn't feel that way at all.

And, yeah, there'd been that one time a week before the shooting, with the tequila, and Tim was such a tactile drunk, and Steph always got crazy ideas when she was tipsy, and Damian's eyes had been so dark...

And that other time after they'd taken down Ivy and Scarecrow's terrifying collaborations - God, she hoped they weren't dating, that would make _everything_ worse - when they'd all been kinda high on adrenaline and antidotes to various toxins, and Damian's bed was pretty inviting...

They hadn't talked about it, and that was fine. She'd gotten used to being in a sort of messed up threesome/poly relationship/fuck buddies/third wheel thing with two of the hottest boys in Gotham. Who also happened to be her besties. So yeah, whether she was sleeping with one or both or neither, she'd been totally fine with it. Life's short, right?

Life's short.

~~~

After the funeral, she calls Dami, and they start moving her into the Clocktower.

Most of the stuff has been bought by Bruce, cause she doesn't have the money or the resources to get tech this good. She didn't particularly want his money, but his point about needing her to be as efficient as possible had made sense. Besides, she may be proud, but not to the point of stupid. She'll pay him back later, especially if her information-broker plans work as well as she hopes. And if some of the money she'll use to pay him back has spent time in the bank accounts of various unsavoury people...she figures it would be justice being served.

Mom's not totally happy about it, but she carries boxes, connects computer cables, helps to assemble some truly magnificent security systems, and takes Bruce aside to hiss at him for a bit, which is lovely of her. Damian looks awful - punch-drunk, like he hasn't slept in years. Once they're basically set up, she finds him in her new bedroom, pouring over one of her old sketchbooks. God, she'd forgotten about those.

He holds up a spread of sketches. It's one of her old superhero costume designs, a bodysuit with a hooded cape and a full-face mask in almost the right shade of eggplant. The rest of the outfit is a rough sketch, but she'd taken her time with the mask. It has an oval forehead and a pointed chin, with stylized features and wavy lines across it's forehead. In fading purple felt-tip above it is written 'Spoiler'.

She smiles a bit sheepishly. "I always planned on being a superhero. I'd have a cape and a mask, and purple everywhere," - Damian snorts at that, and it feels like a victory - "and I'd fight every bad guy that scared me when I walked back from school, and put them all in jail. The first person I was gonna put in jail was Daddy."

And she had, she had. Hating her father had been part of her life for so long that knowing he was locked up, that he couldn't get to them anymore was the sweetest feeling on earth. Knowing she'd done it just made everything better.

Damian doesn't smile, but he does the thing with his eyes that almost counts as one. He gestures to the title. "Why Spoiler?"

She leans her head on his shoulder. "Cause I wanted to spoil the bad guys' plans."

"That is ridiculous."

"Says _Robin._ "

"That reminds me." He shifts on the bed so he can look her in the eye. "Have you picked a name yet?"

Steph looks down at the sketchbook again, at the childish lines of the suit, at the mask which she'd taken hours to get just right. She traces the curve of the face, runs her fingers across the paper that a little girl had filled with hopes for the future, for brighter days. Her smile aches, but it feels good.

"I think I have an idea."

~~~

Four weeks after Tim dies, Bruce collects another orphan. Steph watches the whole thing on CCTV, and when the kid - _shit, he's so skinny, and he looks so tired_ \- gets into the Batmobile, she sits back and breathes for a little bit.

Dami appears a few hours later, with a bottle of something and a blank look on his face. Neither of them really know what to say, so they drink in silence for a little bit, as she peruses her screens. He sits beside her wheelchair, cross-legged, and drinks like it's water. Dami only drinks like that when he really wants to get black-out drunk and not remember anything in the morning.

Steph lets him. She doesn't like it, but this isn't his unhealthiest coping mechanism, and he's a grown adult. He can get pissed instead of dealing with his emotions if he wants to.

They sleep in the same bed again that night, and she wakes up when he tries to leave in the morning, grabs his wrist tight enough to bruise. "Don't hate him," she asks, begs, pleads.

Damian kisses her softly, his mouth still tasting like alcohol, even though he's not drunk anymore. "I'll try not to," he says, and it's not quite a promise, but it's the best she's getting.

When she meets Jason, Steph has to take a moment to remember her own words, because her head's still too full of Tim for this to feel even remotely okay. But he's even thinner than he looked on camera, and she can see herself in him, just a little. The kid has so much pain tucked away in him, but he laughs and jokes and tries to activate her security systems whenever her back's turned. Turns out her brick-to-the-face idea actually works, though it's a bit too easy to dodge.

After a while, they settle into a rhythm. She organises their big missions and gathers information for them to use. Damian comes to her to hide from his feelings and criticize her work ethic. Jason comes to her to hide from Damian and eat her waffles. Mom pops round whenever she can to stock her kitchen and cook for her - she still can't manage anything but waffles, even if she does do some damn good waffles. Alfred sometimes brings her tea and cookies after a particularly shitty night.

Everyone misses Tim, and no-one talks about it.

~~~

The first time she laughs after Tim's death, it's because of Kara.

Her friend had been on an interplanetary mission during the Shooting and the months afterwards. The first she'd seen of her since had been coming home from grocery shopping to find a worried Kryptonian in her front room. Steph's first thought had been _'shit, I really thought I'd got the security systems working'_ , followed by _'why is she looking at me like that oh god is that pity please let that not be pity I'm gonna throw up'_.

The hug had somehow managed to shock her internal monologue into silence.

After that, Kara just...keeps coming round. She turns up at least twice a week, with various tubs of ice cream and funny stories about her day. Kara's a welcome break from the doom-and-gloom of most of the capes, PIs and semi-criminals she deals with; Steph's not even sure Kara knows how to gloom, much less doom.

That is, until the anniversary of Krypton's destruction.

Steph's asleep when the alarms go off. She immediately yanks herself into her chair, making sure her trank guns and escrima sticks are still there before checking the security feeds. When she sees the console room, her blood runs cold, and she immediately shuts off the alarms.

Kara's curled up in a corner of the console room, remains of Steph's security measures scattered around her. Her shoulders shake.

It's horrible, _wrong_ , watching this brilliant, powerful woman fall apart.

Steph wheels up to her friend, and as soon as she's close enough Kara's clinging to her, pressing her face into her legs and sobbing. She murmurs nonsense to her and runs her fingers through tangled blonde hair, wondering how the hell she forgot the date.

Then suddenly Kara is scrambling up, climbing into her lap and curling into her arms, squeezing out any space between them. And Steph gets it, gets needing to be close to someone, needing someone's skin against yours to know you're still alive, still here.

So she holds Kara, cradles her, thankful of her wheelchair's modifications, and lets her shatter to pieces on her shoulder. 

When her friend finally falls asleep, she wheels them back to her room and tucks her into bed. Kara looks so peaceful in her sleep, even with red cry-y eyes. Also really pretty, which is supremely unfair.

 _Really_ pretty. She's not blind, and Kara is the sort of gorgeous that makes everything around her shine just as bright. And yeah, she would totally tap that. But right now Kara's in mourning, and Steph's not a jerk. She's perfectly cool with being Kara's totally platonic ladyfriend if it means she's the one Kara comes to at times like this.

She tears her eyes away from where Kara's curled up under her covers and goes back to the console room. Now she's up, she might as well do some of the things on her ever growing to-do list. Working with the Justice League might make her inner six-year-old hyperventilate, but it's hell on her sleep schedule.

It's midday before Kara emerges. The first thing she does is blur into superspeed and clear up the debris from last night. Steph's just been shoving it out of her way.

"I really need to get you a key," she calls.

Kara blurs back into visibility long enough to grin sheepishly at her, before shooting off again.

Steph doesn't see her again for a few days, and she can't help but worry. But Kara's back before she has to call Big Blue and stage an intervention. She doesn't tell Steph where she was, and Steph doesn't ask. They just sit at the screens together, watching as Gotham goes through it's daily routine. They don't speak, but then again, they don't really need to. They've been friends for so long, they both know exactly what the other is thinking.

So when Kara slides between Steph and her computers and Steph reaches up to tangle her fingers in golden hair and pull her down, it's the most natural and obvious thing in the world.

What surprises Steph most is how little their relationship changes, though it probably shouldn't. They've been living in each other's spaces for years, texting each other random shit, laughing at each other's dumb jokes, patrolling together, taking each other out for meals. This doesn't magically make that go away. They're still Steph and Kara, dream team extraordinaire. Just with more kissing now. Which is super nice.

Damian doesn't even blink when she tells him, just says that he's relieved they finally got their shit together, that he's surprised it didn't happen sooner, since any moron could see the doe eyes Kara was making in her direction, and that he has access to Kryptonite, should it ever become necessary.

~~~

The sun is rising above Wayne Tower and Stephanie Brown is on her third cup of coffee.

She'd pulled an all-nighter; Nightwing and Robin had needed her to co-ordinate a takedown of Two-Face's latest shitstorm, then Helena had got herself kidnapped by the Riddler and she'd had to send Dinah to help (it hadn't been necessary in the end, but the women had bonded over kicking the shit out of minions, so whatever). Then Batwoman'd SOS'd from a burning building, and the new Question had been only too happy to help when she'd called her in. In between, she'd been helping the JLA find a couple of assassins who'd disappeared after trying to kill Wonder Woman. The fact that they'd almost succeeded and had escaped was telling enough - not that she's pointing fingers yet, but her contact in the League of Assassins has promised to at least try to look into it. She thinks they're probably going freelance; al Ghul isn't the type to launch something like this without provocation.

Still, the night's over now.

She leans back in her wheelchair, letting her eyes slide closed. They burn from all the screen time, but it's nothing rest and eyedrops won't fix. Mom has told her she's gonna need glasses in a month if she keeps this up, but Steph's confident she can hold out a bit longer. There's a lazy smile on her face.

One more night. One more night where nobody got killed, or even seriously injured. One more night of doing her job, and doing it well. It's been a good night, and today's shaping up to be a good day; Kara'd promised to come round at about 9, and she's probably going to bring pie. Maybe she'll finally introduce her girlfriend to Jason. She has a funny feeling they'll get on well.

It's been a year and a half since the Shooting. Slightly more than sixteen months since Spoiler put on her mask for the first time. And, even if there's still a big Tim-shaped hole in everyone's lives, Stephanie can honestly, hand on heart say that she's never been happier.

She's not Batgirl anymore, and never will be again. Which, yeah, that's okay.

She doesn't need Batgirl to be awesome.

She's got her Clocktower, and her computers, and her mom, and Kara, and her boys. She's got Dinah and Helena and Batwoman (who's name she's still pretending she doesn't know), who call pretty often for advice and info, or just company. She's got a cool mask in just the right shade of eggplant, and a codename that's her's, really her's this time, and she hasn't so much won the internet as stolen it quietly when no-one was looking. Jason made her a badge.

Life is good.


End file.
